Butcher and Barkeep in Lower Salford counting on variety for success

Eighty percent of all new restaurants are likely to fail in their first year.

That’s the opinion of chef Jeff Sacco, one of the three ownership partners of The Butcher and Barkeep, which opened Nov. 20 in Lower Salford’s Salford Square shopping center at 712 Main St.

What most do not realize, he said, is just how demanding the business of running a restaurant is. It has to be nothing short of your life’s passion. “I like to cook at home” is not nearly enough to justify 13- to 14-hour work days every single Friday and Saturday on the food prep line in close quarters with four other people. Sacco credits his sister with influencing him to pursue the culinary arts.

“This business throws you 25 curves a day. You work your weekends, you work your holidays. Your family life suffers for it,” Sacco said, adding that Christmas Day was the only day off he had the entire month of December, which he spent with his family in Vienna, Va.

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Technically Tuesdays are Sacco’s days off. He leaves someone else in charge and does not set foot in the restaurant unless absolutely necessary. However, Tuesdays typically morph into a working day-off from his Perkiomenville home office, thinking up specials for the rest of the week, planning menus, calling food suppliers.

“Wednesdays are like my Monday. Thursdays and Fridays, I’m too busy to do anything,” he said.

Although Sacco’s in the kitchen a lot of the time, he’s not too busy to notice the families with small children coming in to eat, or the couple in their late 60s sitting next to a 22-year-old patron at the bar.

“There are some very educated people out here. People are just tired of the same old, same old, and they just want better, high-quality ingredients,” that wherever possible, are from a regional source, he said.

What makes or breaks a restaurant, Sacco said, is what happens after the initial public curiosity wears off. What’s going to keep customers coming back? Each day at The Butcher and Barkeep brings new meat and cheese of the day, flatbread of the day, mussels of the day, wings of the day, and soup of the day specials. The restaurant’s concept is Philadelphia dining “without being pretentious” and “more reasonable prices.” Sacco’s partners, Cody Ferdinand and Gerard Angelini, have brought their know-how from Standard Tap in Northern Liberties to the bedroom community of Harleysville.

The menu at the city-inspired gastropub — the buzzword for a neighborhood pub with upscale, gourmet food and beer — undergoes an overhaul as the seasons change. The changeover from winter-appropriate hearty, hot dishes to the spring menu has already begun. An entree will debut soon and there will be several new “small plate” options. By April, there will be “big changes,” Sacco said.

“First of all, it has to taste good. It has to look nice. And you have to be willing to change it up,” he said.

Today, Sacco and the kitchen crew are not only “re-prepping for the whole week,” but also gearing up for perhaps the busiest day in the restaurant business, Valentine’s Day. The Butcher and Barkeep will be offering a special Valentine’s menu, with at least five items not currently on the menu — cold crab salad, seared tuna and New York strip steak among them.

“We always roast off duck,” he said, noting that there are two popular duck meat items on the menu, a duck risotto small plate (a smaller, sub-entree portion) and a shredded duck sandwich with pepper jelly and frisee (a variety of curly-leafed lettuce).

The administrative and office duties of the day completed, the day’s specials written up on the restaurant’s chalkboards, the stations properly prepped, the three cooks on the line are taking an opportunity to prep a meal for themselves before the happy hour and dinner crowd arrive.

The wine selection includes a wine on draft, which right now is a blended red from Karamoor Estates in Fort Washington.

One of the things Ferdinand, a former general manager at Standard Tap, brought to the new restaurant is barrel-aged cocktails. Think the Old Fashioned is tired? Imagine it with vanilla-infused Old Grand-Dad bourbon that’s been in a char oak barrel.

“It imparts a whole other flavor,” said Ferdinand, who can match a cocktail (or create one) with whatever you’re eating.

And wait till you try the sodas Ferdinand has been fermenting with yeast, sugar, and flavors like mint and grape. In the spring, you’ll be able to ask for a Moscow Mule mixed with a house-made ginger beer.

By 5 p.m., the dinner hour is on and most of the tables are occupied. The bar, which seats about two dozen, is also starting to draw a crowd. If it’s like this on a Monday, just imagine what it looked like on Valentine’s Day, which fell on a Friday.